A sermon on Luke 2:1-7 by Rev Richard Keith on Christmas Eve, 2025.
Former Australian cyclist Danny Clark is not a household name these days like Bradman or Freeman or Thorpe. But at the peak of his cycling career in the 1970s and 80s he was among the very best in the world. Before turning professional he won a silver medal at the 1970 Commonwealth Games and at the 1972 Olympic Games. Over a professional career of 24 years, he won 4 gold medals at World Championships as well as 5 silver and 2 bronze, and 12 European championships.
But his feature event was the six day race. Competing in pairs, riders would take turns to ride around an indoor track. Day after day. Night after night for six days. And the pair who complete the most laps of the track won the race. Of 235 six day races he competed in, Danny Clark won 72, the second most wins ever in history of the sport. And he also won the Australian national penny farthing race in 1989. He received the Order of Australia in 1986 and was inducted into the Australian Sport Hall of Fame in 1987.
These days, not many people remember him outside of the cycling community. I only remember him because of something he said in an interview after his retirement. He said that when he first arrived at the professional circuit in Europe, the other cyclists didn’t rate him because he was from Australia. Before that, when he first started competing at the Australian national championships they didn’t think he had a chance because he was from Tasmania. Before that, when he first started competing at the state championships in Hobart they looked down on him because he was from Launceston. And when he first started racing as a boy in Launceston they wrote him off because he was from George Town, a town of six and a half thousand people 50 kilometres north of Launceston at the mouth of the Tamar River.
George Town is famous for not much. It has a penguin colony, a maritime museum, a folk festival, an RSL club and a local FM radio station. The website Wikipedia lists two notable people from George Town. St Kilda assistant coach Brendan Bolton and Danny Clark, who despite his humble origins, became one of the greatest cyclists the world has ever seen.
In Luke chapter 2 we are shown the humble origins of Jesus. His parents were from Nazareth, a backwater town in the backwater province of Galilee of the great Roman Empire. His step father, Joseph, was a carpenter. Not a cabinet maker or fine furniture maker in the modern sense, but a village tradesman, making doors and doorframes and beams and rafters for houses and sheds, simple furniture like benches and stools, and farm equipment like ploughs and yokes. Maybe not an unskilled labourer, dependant day to day on work on rich men’s farms, but still a long way away from where the real money lay in landowning or trade or politics.
Nazareth is an important city today, a centre for religion and culture for its 70,000 occupants. But in Mary and Joseph’s time it was more village than town, with about two to four hundred people. Smaller than Corowa. Even smaller than George Town. Nazareth was not a regional centre. It was not politically important. It was not economically significant. It was not religiously distinguished. Exactly the kind of place that someone would say, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Maybe it wasn’t much in the eyes of other people, but for Mary and Joseph it was home.
Until the day that Caesar Augustus ordered them to leave. He issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the world of big people making decisions that little people had no choice but to obey. Caesar Augustus sat in Rome, at the centre of power. He didn’t know Mary or Joseph. He didn’t know their names or where they lived or what they did. But with a word, he could move them, because he wanted to count them in a census.
Governments have always wanted to count people to find out where they live and what they earn and what they owe, so they can better control them and tax them. The problem with counting people is that people just won’t stay still. They keep moving about. It’s about as tricky as herding cats. In Australia, we have a census every five years and to better count everyone we make them stay home and fill out a form. The inconvenience is more than the hour or two it takes to complete it. It effectively takes out a whole day from the normal weekly schedule for every single family in the country. And get ready, because the next one’s next year.
Counting people was even harder in Mary and Joseph’s day without computers or widespread literacy. So the emperor’s solution was just to make every family go back to the father’s ancestral home. So Mary and Joseph had to leave Nazareth to travel 150 km to the south to Bethlehem. An even smaller village. If Nazareth had two to four hundred people in those days, Bethlehem maybe had one to three hundred. Lying 15 kilometres from the big city of Jerusalem it was completely dwarfed by its far bigger neighbour.
Bethlehem only had one thing going for it. It was the birthplace of great King David, and many of his descendants, some fallen on hard times in the thousand years since him, still lived in the area. So when Augustus ordered the census and every head of the house had to return to his ancestral home, Joseph had to go to Bethlehem because he was from the line of David. Mary went too. She didn’t have to for the census, but Jewish custom expected the couple to stay together. And pregnant as she was, she was far safer with Joseph than left alone at home.
Finally, they arrived in Bethlehem. A tiny village. Dusty streets. Humble houses built of stone and mud. And yet, the place was crowded. People had come for the census, family after family, returning to their ancestral homes. And what might have been a tight fit to squeeze two into the corner of a guestroom became impossible when the time came for Mary to give birth.
So Mary and Joseph had to look elsewhere. Somewhere out of the crowded houses. Somewhere there would be privacy. They found a stable. A lowly shelter for animals. And there, in the quiet and the dust, Mary gave birth to her firstborn. She wrapped him in cloths and laid him in the manger. The food trough for the animals. But in their need its straw would have to serve as a mattress for the baby.
And so the Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah, was born not in a palace, not in splendour, but in a lowly stable. Instead of satin sheets he slept on straw. Instead of heads of state he was visited by shepherds. Humble origins for the One who would be the Saviour of the world.
It was not an accident. It was not a mistake. God had planned it this way. The prophet Micah, centuries before, had foretold it. “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
It’s the promise that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, from a small and unassuming place, from humble origins, and yet would shepherd God’s people and bring salvation.
This was God’s plan, that his Son, the Prince of heaven, should not be sheltered from the troubles and trials of real life. But that he should experience a human life from beginning to end with all its joys and sorrows, with all its challenges and opportunities.
And it was in this genuine experience of life, learning a trade, speaking the language of the common people, being instructed in his Father’s promises in the scriptures, that Jesus learned the ways of God’s kingdom. The values he lived by, compassion, service, humility, mercy, faithfulness, were shaped not in isolation, not in comfort, but in the real struggles of human life. From the manger to the cross, from his humble beginnings to that cruel end, Jesus showed us what the kingdom of God looks like when lived out in the real world.
As the apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians, “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
This is what we celebrate at Christmas, the humble origins of our servant King Jesus. God’s Son, the eternal King, did not come in splendour or power, but in humility and obedience. He took the risks and pains of real life, the struggles of ordinary people, so that he could lead us, serve us, save us and show us the way of God’s kingdom.
From the manger to the cross, humility shaped him. Obedience defined him. And in that humility, the values of God’s kingdom were revealed: love, service, mercy, and faithfulness, the blueprint for how we are to live in the footsteps of Jesus. From the straw of a manger to the wood of a cross, Jesus lived the kingdom so we could follow it.